Anyone with experience with Spotify?

[Keoke Clark]

As a result of CD Baby distribution, 24 songs of mine are on Spotify and, as a test, I streamed the songs on Spotify 10 times a day, every day of the week, for 4 months and yet… no mention in my CD Baby account nor 1¢ or fraction thereof received.

Either the total didn’t meet their threshold of payment or … ?

Now I’m steamed!

[OverDub]

You get around $.01 for roughly every 250 plays as a writer. As long as you are the sole writer and publisher. CD Baby should have nothing to do with it, BMI collects the money from Spotify that I’ve seen. Granted my Spotify money was from songs I wrote, but didn’t perform.

[MichaelL]

You won’t find a stream count on on your CD Baby account page.
CD Baby pays for download sales. Your Pro and/or SoundExchange pay for streams, depending on whether they are interactive or non-interactive.

[daveydad]

I get royalties for Spotify and other streaming services via my CD Baby account all the time and also on my BMI account each quarter. Not sure what the difference is.

[tobytune]

I have a bunch of music on Spotify, Rhapsody, etc. If a song gets 800 plays I usually get $.003. Not enough even to bother with.
I do not use CD Baby but have been using CATAPULT. I like them, they pay every month and there are no yearly fees.

[daveydad]

I make $75-$100/month from streaming but only because I have a number of albums of piano/cinematic/ambient music out there. My production music is not out there for streaming. Also, most of that stream income comes from Pandora plays.

[ENW1]

daveydad: Does your Pandora income pay through CD baby as well? Thanks.

[daveydad]

Yes

[daveydad]

Oh, and I also see some royalties via BMI

[ENW1]

Thanks, daveydad. Good to know.

[Tom Rule]

I have a whole file drawer full of those notices. My favorite so far is when (supposedly) B J Thomas licensed on of my tracks!

I think there are many errors – at least in the ones I’ve seen – or they are from artists who will never sell many.

Some of my tracks have been picked up by compilators, repackaged, and sold on Amazon. Funniest one so far is a smoky-jass-club version of “I Surrender All” (yes, the tune from church)…..on an album called “Smooth Jazz for Lovers”.

….a few grins, but no dinero yet!

[Tom Rule]

Ooops…. “jazz”

[Composer Of Notes]

It’s probably a library that you work for releasing a cd. I’m surprised more people aren’t getting these. I get them weekly and have been for years. Doesn’t add up to much bread but that’s another topic.

[Abby]

I’ve been spending quite a hunk of time trying to research ways to get on spotify ‘playlists’, apparently that is the main (only?) way you would earn much money. It isn’t a very transparent process, and the final straw for me was seeing how much a typical ‘campaign’ would cost to get your music in front of the playlist curators. Over $300?! No thanks!

Then again, some have made tens of thousands by being added to the right playlist, so I guess if you are able to play the game right you could win big. For me trying to figure it all out hasn’t been worth the amount of time invested.

[Phil]

I have had 2 letters from them. My information is correct but the songs they attached are not mine. I have emailed them 4 times with no response so far. It’s kind of annoying me!

[Author]

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